


The Truth And Lies, And Both Hurt The Same

by shewhoguards



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: F/M, Mind Games
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 02:51:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 618
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8127574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/pseuds/shewhoguards
Summary: Irene thinks she loves him, but she still takes poison each morning. The dried leaves burn her mouth and leave a faint tingling soreness in her tongue, insurance against the day he turns against her.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [roseveare](https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseveare/gifts).



Irene thinks she loves him, but she still takes poison each morning. The dried leaves burn her mouth and leave a faint tingling soreness in her tongue, insurance against the day he turns against her.

At first she had hidden the habit; logically if he knew then it should become useless. It was useless to hide anything from a thief though, and one morning she had found her earrings tucked amongst the leaves. Had he meant it as a reproach, as a warning, as a question he did not dare to ask to her face? Irene couldn’t decide, could never read what he meant underneath all his laughter and lies and insistence on love.

The next morning, when he came to breakfast – through the window and laughing at his own cleverness as always – she held his gaze as she openly added the leaves to her tea and drank it down in three swift gulps. Better that he knew what would happen should he choose to betray her than that he might ever consider it a risk worth taking.

*

He says he loves her, but he still wakes screaming at night. There was a time when she tried to comfort him, but always he fended her off, pushing her away with one hand and one empty wrist. When he is awake it is different, when he is awake he reassures her that he does not mean what he says in those sleep-fogged moments. It does not make it easier to believe, and she knows that had anyone done to her what she had done to him she would have had her revenge even if it took a decade or more.

He argues passionately for her to reduce her guards. She wants to trust him, but finds herself wondering in idle moments that how far reduced would be enough; how far reduced would he need to ensure that no-one came when she screamed. In the end she relents, not because she has given him no reason to deceive her but because he has amply demonstrated that should he wish to hurt her no amount of guards would ever be enough to stop her.

She doesn’t tell him about her own nightmares, about the dreams of cold seas closing over her head as heavy clothes drag her beneath the water. She has already shown him enough weakness.

*

As far as public appearances are concerned they can barely stand to share a room, but that has never mattered much. In private they murmur endearments, and Irene believes, or wants to believe, that they mean them. It would hurt to think that those warm secret moments were false, that kisses and embraces and soft sighs in the night were all forced as a matter of survival, or part of some game so long that it was difficult to see the end of it.

There was a knife under her pillow. Eugenides had presented it to her, a week after he had found the poison. He had offered it with his good hand, smiling in a way that made it somehow painful for her to even look at him. Sometimes he almost seemed to invite her to hurt him, as though he would have preferred  to get it over with. She had reacted the only way she knew; taking it, thanking him coldly, and never mentioning it again. But she slept with it under her pillow.

She knew, because of course she had checked – and of course, he would know that she would check – that there was a matching one beneath his pillow.

It was only on the very bad nights that she wondered, if it came to it, who would reach theirs first.


End file.
